


The End

by Dreams2Paper11



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Groundhog Day, Lance falls into the hands of the galra multiple times, Lance's Insecurities, Langst, M/M, Slow Burn, Time loop fic, Whump, Will update tags, because bisexual people discovering that they're bisexual is important dammit, blue lion - Freeform, future dubcon, future implied noncon, galra worldbuilding, hurt!lance, it's not pretty, lance has self-esteem issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-01-18 22:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12397107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreams2Paper11/pseuds/Dreams2Paper11
Summary: (The Groundhog Day, time-loop!fic no one asked for, but I am oh so willing to provide.)Lance dies when a mission to defuse a chronoton detonator bomb goes wrong.Funnily enough, this isn't the end for him.





	1. The First End

**Author's Note:**

> I have no self-control.
> 
> I headcanon this as happening sometime during Season 1 or 2, which is why Lance's characterization might seem like a step back from season!3!Lance, as well as his relationship with Keith.

Shiro had once said that there was a surefire way to go about making a plan; 1). Make the plan. 2). Survive long enough to make a new plan when the first plan inevitably went awry.

Well, Lance thought to himself, that was certainly much easier said than done.

“Guys, like, no pressure or anything,” Hunk’s voice came through the comm. unit, high-strung and thin. “But Yellow says that Green says her scans say you have about 4 minutes to make it to the other end of the ship and the Lions before that bomb goes off. Or something like that, I don’t know if things can get lost in lion-to-lion-to-human translation, it’s not exactly the most efficient method of communication but—”

“Pidge, how’s the bomb deactivation coming along?” Shiro, to his credit, seemed calm, if a little forceful as he interrupted Hunk’s nervous rambling. Lance’s comm. unit picked up the sounds of clanging and groaning metal from Shiro’s channel. No doubt heroically cutting a swathe through the waves of galra sentries as he made his way to the prow of the ship where the Lions were docked. Hunk had stayed behind in Yellow to guard the rest of the lions as the four other paladins infiltrated the ship, but the infiltration had splintered apart when the four of them were separated in the heat of battle.

“Not that great, Shiro. This thing is so heavily encrypted, it’s ridiculous. Every time I hack galra-tech, they switch it up so I can never use the same backdoor twice!” Pidge sounded frustrated and angry, her thin shoulders hunched like an angry cat as she typed frantically into the bomb’s holotech. “I’ve never seen this kind of technology from them before.”

“Well, you don’t run an empire for 10,000 years with crappy coding and Windows 10,” Lance said lightly, but his heart was pounding and his hands felt sweaty inside their gloves. God, he and Pidge were standing right in the bomb’s containment chamber as it went about the process of priming itself for detonation. If it went off, they were done for. Lance was no stranger to getting blown up, but he wasn’t exactly eager for a repeat performance.

Pidge growled mindlessly in reply, her fingers blurring over the keys. Every combination she entered lit up red and re-tripped the ship’s alarms. Which didn’t necessarily matter, considering that the galra already knew they were there. The broken shells of sentries littering the chamber’s main entrance were a testament to this sad fact. Lance kept his bayard’s sights trained on the doors, consciously holding himself in the correct posture for shooting so that he could provide cover for Pidge while she worked.

Firing guns on the range with his uncle in Cuba had once been fun. Few private citizens had access to firearms, but Lance’s uncle was involved with the _Policía Nacional Revolucionaria_ and had all kinds of contacts. Before becoming a paladin, Lance had considered himself to be a crackshot, but shooting on the private range in a calm and contained environment, setting up each shot at the stationary target at his leisure, was much different than firing on active hostiles in a battlezone and he beat himself up internally for every missed shot since the mission began.

A tense minute had passed.

“This isn’t working,” Shiro finally said over the comms. “Pidge, Lance, get to the lions. Allura is going to open up a wormhole and get us out of the blast radius. I’m re-routing to your location.”

“Negative, Shiro,” Lance said, hoping he sounded as equally calm, “The bridge connecting the chamber to the main ship is down and our suits’ thrusters were busted by enemy fire. We’re stuck here.”

“You’re just mentioning this now?” Keith spluttered incredulously.

“Well, to be fair, Pidge has never had a problem with their security before,” Lance said jokingly. A flash of purple and grey whipped around the doorframe and Lance’s finger tapped the trigger instantly. The pulse caught the sentry directly in the face, parting its head from its shoulders—

Oh.

Not a sentry, then.

“Lance?” Pidge asked worriedly, twisting around to get a good look at him. Lance automatically blocked her line of sight with his arm, swallowing past the bile that had risen in his throat.

“Focus on the bomb, Pigeon. I’m good here,” his voice felt faint and far away.  

"My booster is down, too," Shiro interjected before Lance could really work himself up. "Took a heavy hit on the back from a sentry, the thrusters barely fizzle now."

"Are you okay?" Keith asked anxiously.

"Fine," Shiro was quick to reassure. "We need to focus on the bomb now. Pidge? Any luck?"

Pidge didn't answer, her shoulders tight and defensive.

"Pidge?" Lance prompted.

She pivoted, making eye contact with him. Her eyes were wide and shocked.

“Lance, I—I can’t hack this. Not in 2 minutes," she whispered.

God, she sounded so young.

“Guys! You need to get out of there, _now!”_ Keith, again. He sounded genuinely concerned over their imminent fate. The asshole.

“No, really? Well, there go my plans for a mid-mission _siesta_ ,” Lance snapped, but he threw himself into gear anyway, scanning the bomb’s enormous spherical chamber for ventilation shafts. Maybe Pidge could use her bayard like a grappling hook and pull them up to one of the grates—but they were so small, even Pidge would have trouble scooting through them, and Lance’s broad, manly shoulders were meant for cuddling the babes, not fitting in tiny spaces.

A strange groaning vibrated through the soles of Lance’s boots and shuddered through the metal of the ship. For a moment, the catwalk bucked gently under Lance’s feet and he stumbled sideways, catching himself, and then Pidge, with one hand braced on the railing. The ship was literally falling apart around them. Couldn’t anything in his life be easy, just once?

“I’m in Red, I’m gonna try to cut the hull by your side and get you guys out,” Keith snarled.

“Keith, stop! Any strong vibrations could set the bomb off right away!” Pidge’s voice was shrill. “Its stabilizers are barely holding up under the structural damage to the ship anyway! Any more forces on it and Lance and I are vaporized.”

“Well—” Keith floundered. “Shiro, what do we do?”

“Allura, can you possibly open a wormhole in the bomb chamber? Send it somewhere else?” Shiro didn’t sound as calm anymore, but he was making a brave effort at keeping it together. Maybe it was because the timer in the corner of Lance’s HUD spelled out 1 minute and 20 seconds until instantaneous death for the green and blue paladins. Yeah, that would kind of stress anyone. Good thing Lance had nerves of steel, as befitting a Paladin of Voltron. It was just a personality trait that came with the whole hero ensemble: dashing good looks, a charming and witty personality, and unshakable bravery.

Honestly, Lance was kind of over-qualified.

“I don’t have the strength to send it anywhere far enough without bringing more inhabited planets into its radius,” Allura answered tightly. “Not to mention if it destabilized in the middle of the transport.”

“What about us?” Lance called. “Can you open a small wormhole so that Pidge and I can escape through it and leave the bomb behind?”

 _and leave the bomb behind to blow up the Nexa_ _quadrant_ went unsaid. Failure tasted bitter in Lance's mouth. They'd had missions before where they failed their objective and innocent lives were lost, but not to this scale. 

“I can try,” Allura said uncertainly. “I’ve never done such a small and location-specific one before, though, and we run the risk of me opening it right on top of the bomb itself.”

“We don’t have any other options!” Lance exclaimed as the ship shuddered ominously once more. “Allura! Get us out of here!”

Without warning, a massive explosion ripped through the chamber’s walls and Lance felt himself go sailing through the air, stunned, and hit something metal hard enough that things went black and starburst-y. For a heart-wrenching moment, he thought the bomb had gone off, but it wasn’t possible—he was still alive, albeit in a grave amount of pain.

“Pidge!” He croaked, rolling himself up to his knees, cradling his ribs. Something had definitely broken. He couldn’t draw in a full breath.

The catwalk where he and Pidge were crouched had snapped in half like a taut rope, either end flying apart. Lance had been thrown 20 meters from the bomb and was saved from a life-ending drop from the catwalk to the chamber's floor by only a few bent railings that had caught his body like a catcher’s mitt. Miraculously, the chrono-bomb hadn’t been triggered by the ship’s deterioration, though that wouldn’t matter in thirty seconds anyway.

His helmet was cracked, the HUD flickering uselessly. He tore it off with a pained grunt and let it drop far below. Allura would be mad about it, but—no. Lance felt a kind of hysterical peace descend on him. Allura wouldn’t be mad. Mostly because she was never going to see him again.

Because Lance was going to die.

Green moved in the corner of his eye, below him and off to his right. Pidge was getting dazedly to her feet, trapped on a small ledge of ripped panelling that jutted from the chamber’s wall. Relief so strong it made his knees weak washed through him. Pidge was alive. That was good.

What was even better was the small wormhole swirling in midair only 2 meters from her perch. Allura must have opened it when their comms. were severed in an attempt to blindly provide a way out. Fortunate that it had opened so near Pidge and not inside of the bomb itself.

“Pidge, go!” Lance tried to shout, but he could barely raise his voice above conversational volume, it hurt so bad to breathe in. His voice cracked in fear—no, not fear. Just stress. For Pidge, of course. Heroes weren't afraid of a little pain. Or permanent injury. Or death. “Get out!”

“Not leaving you,” she muttered back, fumbling for her bayard and aiming it in his general direction. Her hand wobbled and the line sailed by uselessly out of range for Lance to grab. He was too far away to see clearly, but he thought he saw blood coating her temple. Debris rained down around them and the shuddering of the ship’s structure increased in strength as another blast activated elsewhere on the ship. The bomb was beeping frantically now.

It was _over_ , he marveled to himself. The whole situation was so bizarre, it was almost surreal. He tried momentarily to wrap his head around the fact that he would be dead in a few seconds, but it was impossible to comprehend without completely breaking down into a screaming, shivery mess, and anyway, he had to look cool in front of his sister-figure, so he stopped trying.

“Go!” he screamed hoarsely, cradling his ribcage as lightning bolts of pain forked through it.

Before Pidge could respond, an arm reached through the wormhole, followed by a face and the upper part of someone’s chest. Shiro. He stretched his arm out to Pidge, clearly beckoning.

“Pidge, come on!” he yelled. She scrambled instantly into action, spurred instinctively by the command in that voice, but Lance could just barely hear her over the continuous grumbling of the ship as things continued to fall apart around them. She was crying, saying “Shiro, we can’t leave him, we can’t leave him Shiro, please, _wecan’tleavehim_ —” over and over, but then Shiro grabbed her hand and yanked her through the wormhole and then she was gone, safe, and Lance was alone.

Not for long, though.

Shiro’s face popped through the wormhole again, fixating immediately on where Lance lay, immobile and wounded, 15 meters above him and to his left, hopelessly out of reach. Their eyes connected. Lance saw a knowing kind of horror in Shiro’s twisted expression. The kind of expression you had watching a car wreck happen right in front of you and being unable to stop it.

"I can't reach you," Shiro said numbly. "Lance, you're going to have to jump." He raised his arms, as though indicating he would catch him.

"Can't," Lance gasped. He peeled his hand away from his side, and oh, apparently the damage was worse then he thought because his glove came away shiny with blood. "Wouldn't make. The distance." Short bursts were all he could manage. The adrenalin was wearing off now, and Lance felt incredibly weak as the pain began to radiate out from his chest. 

"No, Lance, come on, you have to try--"

“ _Go_ ,” Lance whispered, and it was really fucking annoying that the tentative peace was wavering in and out of his grasp now when he needed it most. He wanted to scream, to beg Shiro to save him and make things right like he always did. He wanted to hold his head high and die without flinching. He didn't want to die at all.

His eyes were suddenly hot and blurry with tears and he hoped Shiro was too far away to see him cry.

It was just so _unfair_.

“Lance, I—” Shiro’s voice wasn’t calm anymore. Apparently, there were limits to that godlike reservoir of composure, after all. Who knew? “I’m so sorry.”

Lance tried to say a joke but it got all twisted around in his throat and what whispered out instead was, shamefully, "'M really scared, Shiro, I don' wanna die. _"_

Great final words, there, Lance. Long after he was gone, the tale would be told of the Blue Paladin’s pathetic cowardice to new members of the Voltron coalition; _“I’m so scared,”_ like a little kid who hadn’t just killed someone minutes ago, like a stupid boy who barely scraped into Fighter Class and spent his entire life pretending to be greater than he really was.

Hyperventilating now in an effort to get air into his lungs, he tried to organize his thoughts, painfully aware of the small amount of time he had left. All the heroes who died tragically in the books he read faced their end bravely and without any regrets.

How unrealistic. Lance had a lot of regrets and not enough time to fix any of them.

God, he was such a _loser_. Voltron was lucky it was him about to get blown up and not someone totally irreplaceable.

Shiro’s face twisted in agonized grief. "It'll be okay," he said, without any meaning or certainty. His voice was trembling. Lance had coined it as Shiro's Dad-voice, generally used when one of them got hurt and he didn't quite know how to fix it but was determined to try. "It's gonna be okay, Lance."

“Tell—m'family—” Lance began, but he had forgotten that without his HUD, he didn’t have a countdown running anymore, and it must have hit zero because suddenly someone yanked Shiro back and the wormhole closed. 

Lance stared dumbly at the empty space where Shiro had just been and closed his eyes.

The frantic beeping stopped, and within the next micro-second Lance felt a concussive blast of heat and pain and sound, and then nothing at all.

 


	2. The Second End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Some mild gore ahead.
> 
> Things must get worse before they get even worse.

Soft, spanish guitar.

Warmth.

Something covering his face.

Lance opened his eyes to blackness, his lashes scraping against fabric. He reached up, tearing the mask off his face and dislodging the headphones with a shake. He felt drowsy, comfortable. Safe.

Not in any pain at all.

He let the headphones dangle in his lap, distant music still playing from them, and stared at the wall of his bedroom. A dream, then. Some freaky kind of lucid-dream, most likely brought on by his anxieties and memory of the drone-explosion. Inhaling shakily, he buried his face in his hands, uncaring of the dried sheetmask still clinging to his face. What a horrible dream. It felt as clear as his memories of yesterday.

“No more food goo before bed, I guess,” he muttered.

The clock on the nightstand (programmed by Pidge to show Roman numerals) showed the time as 6:01 in the morning. He was awake much earlier than he generally preferred to be, but there was no chance of going back to sleep after that doozy of a nightmare. Throwing his legs to the side of the bed, he slipped his bare feet into his slippers and slid out from the comforting embrace of the blankets.

After showering, washing his face, toning, and moisturizing, he felt a little more like himself. The nightmare didn’t feel any less real, but he scoffed at its details as he towel-dried his hair. Pidge, not being able to hack something? Yeah, right. It would almost be funny in retrospect if not for the lingering wave of fear and helplessness he felt at the thought of the bomb and his ensuing “death”.

At this hour, only Coran and Allura were generally the ones awake. Coran had once explained that Alteans had 20 Earth hours in one of their day cycles, and only required an average 4 hours of them for rest. Which explained why Allura had thought them lazy in those awkward first few days living together. Once Shiro had explained that humans needed more sleep than Alteans did and had longer day cycles, she had looked apologetic, but also somewhat disappointed.

Sometimes Lance felt irritated with her expectations of them. This was an incredibly difficult transition for the humans—for God’s sake, three months ago they hadn’t even known for sure that aliens existed. They had all been removed from familiar surroundings, plunged into a war they had nearly zero personal experience with, and were expected to roll with the punches uncomplaingly. Every time she talked about the fighting capabilities of an Altean child compared to their (lack of) prowess, Lance wanted to tug at his hair in frustration. It wasn’t like they’d all signed up for this. Being a paladin was seriously awesome most of the time, and he wouldn’t trade his bond with Blue for anything, but that didn’t mean sometimes he didn’t just want to find a quiet room and be alone for a little while.

Pidge had it hard too. Lance could tell all she wanted to do was take Green and rampage through the galaxy looking for her family, but her responsibilities to Voltron kept her anchored with the team. Lance had a lot of sympathy for her position. If creepy space-cat/lizards with a penchant for the removal of limbs and a hobby for torture had his family, he would’ve hopped in Blue the first day and booked it right to their HQ, guns blazing.

He dressed himself in the single outfit he had from Earth. The clothes had been washed so many times that the fabric was starting to wear thin and scratchy. Even his jacket was starting to thread. He should have worn the Altean outfits Coran had arranged for them, but today he felt like drawing the familiar clothes around himself like an emotional shield, still feeling somewhat raw from the vivid nightmare.

Mercifully, today’s schedule had been left open—Allura had decided to let them have a rare break and Lance planned to capitalize on it fully.

Operation Treat Yo’ Self was a-go.

He listened to music for two hours and then played around with the Altean toys Coran had scrounged up from castle storage, trying to figure out how they worked and what the game’s objective was when he didn’t fully understand the Altean written or spoken language. Being bilingual meant languages came quickly to him, but Altean was not at all similar to any of Earth’s romantic languages and he was having some trouble with deciphering the tenses.

He became aware that he was hungry around lunchtime, but still didn’t feel like being around the team just yet. Having experienced these emotional-low periods before when the homesickness was especially strong, Lance kept a small stockpile of Altean snacks in his top drawer. They were, unbelievably, even more bland than the food goo—in fact, they kind of tasted like laundry lint that had been pressed into bars—but they were just as nutritious and admittedly filling. This way he could be alone for a while without being forced to leave in search of food.

Nibbling his way slowly through one bar, he began practicing the forms of his pilates routine in the solitude of his room. It was easy to imagine that his older sister Camila was there beside him, teasing his form and guiding him to ground his muscles deep into the stretches. She was a pilates/dance instructor and one of Lance’s closest friends in addition to being his sibling—she was so familiar to him that he could nearly hear her chatter beside him, mostly English but blending into Spanish when she got too passionate.

When the group had packed into the Blue Lion and blasted away from Earth’s atmosphere, unknowingly plunging themselves into a war the scale of which Earth had never experienced, Camila had been seven months pregnant with her and her husband’s first child.

Lance eased himself out of the scissors position, abruptly floored by the realization that she would have had the baby by now. They had wanted the sex of the child to be a surprise, so Lance wasn’t even sure if it was a boy or a girl. _Dios,_  what if something had gone wrong with the birth? A miscarriage? And Lance wouldn’t know until he returned to Earth, who knows how many years down the line that would be. The baby might never know their uncle Lancey-Lance. He would never get to hug and cuddle and squish soft baby cheeks and bounce him/her on his knee, or hype them up on sugar and gleefully send them off to their parents.

In fact… he didn’t really know the current condition of _any_ of his family members. For so long, he had been thinking of his memories of them as perfectly preserved ideations of themselves—without realizing that they were inevitably changing while he was away.

What if something awful had happened to one of them? One of his family members could be dead right now and he would never even know.

The sound of his own panicked breathing brought him out of the dark path his thoughts had wandered down. He buried his head in his hands, feeling himself shake uncontrollably. It was best not to think about these things—no use inventing nonexistent tragedies, when it was already stressful enough flying into space battles every other day. He couldn’t do that _and_ think about what he was missing on Earth, the strain would be too much. He’d screw something up in the heat of battle and then Voltron would be defeated and the team would all be dead.

Maybe it made him a bad son or brother to firmly shove all thoughts of his family out of mind when possible, but there was just no other way to continue on without collapsing into an emotional wreck.

* * *

 After luxuriating in the Altean baths (they had jets!) until the water was cold and his skin pruney, Lance decided it was finally time to seek out the other occupants of the castle. Since it was almost dinner, he knew where Hunk would be and decided to seek him out first. As he neared the eating quarters, Lance could hear his teammate bustling around in the kitchen, accompanied by the clanging of pots and pans. Something niggled at the back of his brain—hadn’t his nightmare contained something like this? Just another normal evening in space for Voltron with Hunk messing around in the kitchen?

A coincidence, nothing more.

“What’s cooking, good-looking?” he teased, leaning against the counter. He almost felt silly now for avoiding his teammates all day. When he was feeling down, he tended to close himself off from the world, but Hunk always knew how to bring him out of his funk. In fact, ‘Hunk says no funk!’ used to be something he would chant when Lance was particularly stressed about his assignments or simply missing home, and he would repeat it louder and louder until he got Lance to crack a smile.

Just thinking of the memory helped cheer him up.

Hunk grinned brightly at him and hefted a steaming pan in his mitted-hands. “Evening, Lance! You’re up early today!” he joked, and Lance rolled his eyes. He went on, “Look, I’m trying to make space-bacon.” He tilted the pan down so Lance could see. “Want to give it a try?”

Lance stared at the squiggles of fried food goo. In his nightmare, Hunk had similarly started preparations for the evening meal with an attempt at space-bacon. It had tasted like wet grass and Hunk had disappointedly dumped the whole batch and they’d all resigned themselves to plain old food goo.

“Sure,” he said slowly, reaching for a piece. “Can’t be any worse than regular old food goo.”

And… there was that crunchy taste of wet grass again. Lance winced, pushing the half-chewed lump out with his tongue into his cupped hand. “Uh, that doesn’t really taste like bacon, buddy.”

“What? But I isolated the main flavor components in the food goo comparable to meat from Earth livestock,” Hunk grumbled, crestfallen, and scooped up a piece to try for himself. He chewed, blanched, and spit it out the same way Lance had.

“Well, bland food goo from a nozzle for dinner again,” Hunk said in disappointment.

Lance clapped a hand on his broad shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. I’m sure you’ll figure it out!” He smiled cheerily, but couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong.

“Figure what out?” Coran asked brightly, entering the kitchen area. He wriggled his mustache, tugging at the collar of his suit proudly. “You know, I’m something of a mechanic myself if you need help with figurin’ things and all that. They used to call me—”

“Coranic the mechanic,” Hunk and Lance finished together, grinning.

“No offense, but this is more of an issue for the culinary-inclined, Coran,” Hunk said, flicking the burners on the Altean grill off and wiping up his workstation. “We’re trying to figure out how to bring Earth flavors to the food-goo.”

“Well, what’s wrong with it right now?” Coran asked, confused. “It’s highly nutritious and perfectly inoffensive to the palate! Why, it’s everything an Altean warrior in training could ever want!”

“Except for taste,” Lance teased, and Coran puffed up indignantly at the perceived slight to his culture's cuisine.

“I’ll have you know that Altean chefs—woah!” he danced to the side, lifting one leg high and jumping away on one foot. Angry squeaking came from under the chairs and two of Allura’s mice ran out from under Coran’s feet.

“Don’t yell at me! I’m not the one running around underfoot, just asking to be squished!” Coran shouted sternly. The mice squeaked some more and Coran’s face went a shade of red that clashed horribly with his coloring. “I have no idea what you’re saying, but I’ll assume it was insulting!”

Hunk was laughing, but Lance had gone abruptly cold.

Because he remembered this exact scenario.

The sense of deja vu was so strong that he sank into the nearest chair, staring into the distance as he thought.

What was going on?

“Oh, good evening, Princess!” Coran said cheerily, all anger forgotten. Lance lifted his eyes from the floor and looked upwards to find Allura standing in the doorway to the kitchen, kitted up in her sleek armored suit. Her face was drawn and serious.

“I need everyone on the bridge, now,” she said briskly, and Lance could almost mouth the words alongside her, so oddly familiar were they,  “there’s been a distress call from the council of the Nexa quadrant.”

Lance’s stomach dropped.

* * *

 “Councilman Thars’la, do you know what kind of weapon they’re building?” Shiro asked, arms crossed and in full Leader-mode.

It was 7:54 p.m. by Earth’s standards and everyone was assembled in the ship’s holodeck in their paladin armor. Projected on the holoscreen was an estimated display of the amount of galra forces defending the recently-discovered base—roughly three massive battlecruisers and 500 individual ships in total. The only reason they had gone unnoticed for so long, explained the Nexa councilman, was the recent, vast improvements made to their cloaking technology.

Lance remembered these exact numbers from his nightmare.

 _What the quiznak?_ He kept thinking over and over again. _This happened in my nightmare, what the quiznak is going on right now?_

“We can’t say for sure,” the councilman replied. His species was a humanoid one, but two feet smaller than the average human height, with five eyes, mint-green skin, no hair, and clusters of darker spots randomly spread over the skin.

Lance distinctly remembered him, down to the last funny-shaped spot above the alien’s fourth eye.

“The galra instated military rule nearly a decapheeb ago on my planet. Travel and communication have been extremely limited since. I only just managed to sneak away long enough to transmit this message to you, Princess, and I’m not certain how long I’ll be able to keep this channel up and running before they find me.”

It was an ominous statement.

And it was one Lance had heard before.

“Well, do you have any information that could help?” Allura clarified.

“We know it’s a bomb of some kind,” the councilman answered. “Long-range sensors picked up extraordinary amounts of quintessence, but unlike any kind our scientists have ever encountered before. One of our spies retrieved a partial remnant of the early schematics for the bomb—it was being called a chronoton detonator.”

Allura and Coran gasped. Lance closed his eyes, fighting off the sweats. The deja vu was so intense that he felt like he was standing in two points of time simultaneously.

“This is terrible!” Coran shouted. “Forays into chronotechnology were halted 10,000 years ago universally wide! Even Zarkon must know how dangerous that stuff is! He could unravel the entire fabric of being as we know it!” He waved his arms, imitating a shockwave of some kind. “Or blow up everything within the same quadrant!”

“You understand the peril we are in, then,” the councilman said gravely. “We’re not even sure what the effects of the bomb would be if it were to accidentally go off before the galra could finish their work on it. It could rewind or hyperjump time in a localized area by hexa-decapheebs, or it could simply obliterate everything—and every person—it reaches from the fabric of existence, as though they were never born. Or, if they get a single calculation incorrect, it could trigger an explosion that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocents and wipe out my entire people.”

“Okay, so,” Hunk spoke up timidly, “on Earth we were just getting into this kind of science, but I’m pretty sure the general consensus at the time was that time itself was considered to be an immaterial measurement of entropy that runs only forward on a linear path. I’m not sure how they’re harnessing it, exactly?”

“10,000 years ago, the science behind such technology was incredibly complex and involved no small amount of Altean magic,” Allura explained. “Without the ability to harness quintessence, I’m not sure your scientists would have properly revealed the properties of chronotechnology even if they had another thousand of your years to study it. But that doesn’t matter—at the moment, we need to focus only on stopping this bomb from finishing development.”

“If they have the detonation process encoded already, I can hack it,” Pidge asserted confidently. “I would have to do it manually on-site, but it would give us time to clear out the galra and get some experts to dismantle it.”

“Good idea, Pidge,” Shiro said. He ruffled her shaggy hair and grinned fondly. For a moment, Lance thought he saw blood on her temple and shook his head to clear the image.

“We’re bringing the Lions into a massive concentration of galra fighters and cruisers. Are we just gonna dock them and leave them there while Pidge gets to the bomb?” Keith asked, arms crossed and eyebrow arched.

“I could stay behind with them,” Hunk offered. “I mean, my lion is armoured enough to take the brunt of galra fire if I have to defend them.”

“Hunk, we might need you on the infiltration squad itself,” Allura pointed out. “You have valuable technological experience.”

“In chronoton detonators?” Hunk asked flatly. “I’m really good with the engineering stuff, but I didn’t even know that chronoton detonators were a thing until fifteen seconds ago! Even I have limits to what I can do. For now, I think we just need to worry about the coding of the detonation sequence itself. If Pidge can upload a virus that shuts it down in case the detonation is primed, we’re good until someone more knowledgeable in chronotechnology can shut it down safely.”

Lance wet his lips. This is where he remembered volunteering to take point for Pidge and provide cover fire so she could work on the bomb without worrying about watching her back. Instead, he stayed quiet. All he could think about was the memory of pain in his chest and Shiro’s devastated expression.

The conversation didn’t even really seem to need him, anyway. Shiro went through the mission’s outline, assigning various duties to the members, until finally he turned to Lance with an arched, expectant brow.

“What?” Lance asked faintly.

“You’re awfully quiet today,” Shiro said slowly.

Lance shuffled, fully aware of his teammate’s eyes focusing on him. “I just… look, I know this will sound hard to believe, but I think I saw this happen in my dream last night.”

He looked up, only to be met by incredulous expressions.

“Are you seriously playing around at a time like this?” Keith asked flatly.

“Yeah, I mean…. no offense, but you tell me about how weird your dreams are all the time,” Pidge said, and then added exasperatedly under her breath, “even when I tell you I’m busy.”

Immediately, Lance went on the defensive, choosing to target Keith in his anger. “I’m not playing around! I seriously remember this exact scenario happening before! It’s like deja vu on steroids.” He turned to Coran. “I remember you nearly stepping on Allura’s mice today—”

 _“What?_ ” Allura interjected flatly—

“—and Hunk, I remember you attempting the bacon food goo.” He wrinkled his nose. “I even remembered the taste. Sorry, buddy, not your best work.” He became more serious as he continued. “And if I remember correctly, we go to this galra outpost, Hunk stays to guard the lions, the infiltration squad gets separated because the galra figure out we’re there and the bomb gets set to go off, me and Pidge get to the bomb but she’s unable to hack it in time, and then— _I blow up!”_

He realized he was shouting at the end. He couldn’t help it. Just the thought of stepping foot in that bomb chamber again made his heart skip a beat in fear.

“Look,” Shiro said slowly, advancing forward to rest his hand protectively on Lance’s shoulder. “I know you’ve had bad experiences with explosions in the past, but I have full trust in Pidge’s capabilities to hack this thing. You don’t have to be afraid.”

He was speaking sympathetically, but Lance felt his cheeks go red in humiliation.

“I—I’m not _afraid!”_ he spat, even if it wasn’t true. “I just—I think I had a dream of the future or something! I’m telling you, we _really_ need to make a different plan.”

“We’re not altering a perfectly good plan because you had a scary dream,” Keith snorted dismissively. Lance knew he wasn’t being intentionally cruel but couldn’t help feeling surprisingly hurt by his disbelief.

“Seriously, Lance, you really think I’m gonna have trouble with hacking a galra system?” Pidge demanded. “I do that for my morning _warm-ups!”_

“Yeah, even I have to admit it’s a little difficult to believe,” Hunk added, shrugging apologetically when Lance’s head whipped towards his best friend in betrayal.

“Allura, it’s got to be possible to have prophetic dreams, right?” Lance interrogated, but even as he asked, her skeptical expression remained unchanged.

“I suppose so, but… only the most trained Alteans could harness this ability to reach out to the collective energies of the universe and parse the future from the vast pool of quintessence… and even then, such occurrences in my people’s history were few and each allegedly led to wasteful bloodshed in our ancient history. And, Lance, to be entirely honest, I very much doubt you would have this ability.”

Lance must have had some type of visible reaction to that, because she hastily added, “Not that you aren’t special in your... _own, unique_ way, but this power was nearly more myth than fact amongst my own people, and it was my understanding that humans did not have such abilities either.” She shrugged. “And even if you did somehow miraculously receive this vision, I’m unsure how radically we could deviate without extreme consequence. Attempts to scry the future were heavily banned for a reason.”

“‘A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it’,” Hunk said sagely.

“Stop quoting Kung Fu Panda like you’re the one who came up with it!” Lance snapped.

Keith offered, “Actually, I think it was Jean de la Fontaine who said that.”

“Whatever!” Lance exclaimed. He turned back to Allura. “So you’re saying that I’m doomed to die, that’s it? ‘Sorry Lance, we know you have to get blown up and all, but you gotta learn to take one for the team’? Huh!? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all!” Allura snapped, but she seemed hurt. “Lance, you’re being hysterical! Of course I would never wish for you to die! I’m simply saying we should really think this through before making any rash decisions.”

“The only rash decision that’s being made here is the decision to just _mosey_ on over into enemy territory in search of a nuclear space bomb!” Lance accused hotly.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Shiro said firmly. “Lance, you know I trust you—”

_Do you?_

“—but you have to admit, this whole vision-theory sounds… a little ridiculous and very out-of-the-blue,” he finished.

Lance, to his horror, felt himself inexplicably tearing up. He turned to glare at the wall so no one would notice. “What, because I’m _stupid_ and nothing special could ever happen to me?” he spat. “I don’t even care about that! I just don’t want anyone to get hurt, or worse!” A shiver worked its way down his spine as he remembered those agonizing seconds of staring at the bomb as it ticked, helpless to do anything but die.

“Look,” Keith growled, pushing off the wall. “This has an obvious solution. Why don’t we just get an account of events from Lance, and then go on with the mission like we were planning? If the things Lance said start happening, we’ll know he’s telling the truth and we can re-group.”

“Yes! _Thank_ you, Keith!” Lance exclaimed. He hadn’t expected Keith to be the one to step in, but he supposed it fit—Keith had a very simplistic view of the world and he didn’t believe in wasting time.

“That does seem to be the wisest course,” Coran agreed, pinching at his mustache. “That was some wonderful mediation, Keith, maybe in a few haxaquintents we’ll be able to start bringing you on diplomatic missions!”

Keith scowled and turned away as Pidge giggled.

By the time Lance felt Shiro’s hand on his shoulder, he had managed to put away the strange burst of emotion that had rocked him moments ago. He faced the group and waited for the verdict.

“Okay, Lance,” Shiro said. His tone was earnest and open. “Tell us what you remember.”

* * *

 

The galra flagship of the outpost was a jaw-dropping example of sleek murder, coasting through space like a bull shark through shallow water. Lance watched it through Blue’s viewport, thinking only of the bomb hidden within.

His connection with Blue flowed around the layers of his mind, browsing from subconscious to surface level, and he could feel a presence examining the ship through his eyes in an attempt to determine the reason for his distress. None of the Lions spoke to them in actual words, per se, but when they chose to act, you always knew what they meant. Lance had once described the bond as oil slipping over water—one mixture together, but two distinct parts.

Now, he could feel Blue’s curiosity strengthening as his heart rate skyrocketed the closer they got to the menacing ship. He turned his attention wholly on the bond in order to distract himself.

Allura said that the Blue Lion was the friendliest and most accepting of new pilots. Perhaps she had meant to insinuate the Lance himself was the friendliest and most accepting, but at the time, Lance found himself seriously underwhelmed. That description didn’t seem to match up with the ones for the other lions— _this one needs a strong, decisive leader, this one needs natural curiosity and values intelligence, this one requires sharp instinctual skills…_

 _...._ and this Lion just accepts everybody who gets thrown at it. Don’t have to be special in any way, just need a warm body to fill the seat.

A sharp, icy pulse throbbed in his temples and Lance winced. He could feel Blue’s insulted displeasure thrashing against the back of his skull like an angry wave pounding against the shore. Lance wasn’t sure he could apologize—he still felt that way, but as an entreaty, he bundled up all the emotions swirling through him—the fear, the dread, the confusion and the self-doubt—and pushed them her way.

She processed the emotions quickly and in their wake Lance felt a cool, steady sense of peace flow into him. Allura had a funny definition of ‘friendly’, because Blue didn’t exactly coo and coddle—instead, her method of reassurance distinctly brought to mind one of Lance’s most peaceful memories; Veradera beach, lying on his back on the shallow ocean floor with the weight of the rocking water pinning him, looking upwards and watching the sunlit surface roll over him high above and feeling far removed from his daily troubles.

He settled at the sensation and rubbed his fingers gratefully over the controls. “Whatever happens, we’re strong enough to deal with it,” he whispered. The ocean in his head surged fiercely in agreement.

They were nearly within range of the galra’s long-range sensors.

“Okay, Lance, you said that at this point, a small squadron of fifteen ships, the ship second from the left visibly damaged, docked in the the flagship’s rear entrance?” Keith asked. The Red Lion soared next to him, as agile and quick as a hummingbird… a heavily-armed hummingbird of death. Huh. It really did fit Keith, didn’t it?

There was a joke in there somewhere about ‘docking in someone’s rear entrance’, but Lance wasn’t in the mood to share it. He unmuted his mic and leaned forward to see better. Pidge’s recent tinkering—the unveiling of which had been an event that also exactly unfolded in Lance’s dream—allowed the Green Lion to spread a temporary cloaking shield over all the Lions, but it didn’t last very long—they had just enough time to see if Lance’s first prediction came true and make a quick change of plans if necessary.

And lo and behold… fifteen galra soldier-class ships jetted, in clear flying formation, from behind the curve of Nexanis’ outer atmosphere, tracking a path directly towards the flagship’s rear bay. Lance watched smugly. The ship second from the left, just as he remembered, was clearly struggling to close the distance, one of its wings badly damaged.

In his dream, the team had hypothesized the damage came from an encounter with the mutinous locals of Nexanis.

“Okay… I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t really need any more signs. Lance, I believe you. Sorry I doubted you, buddy,” Hunk apologized.

“I guess this really does mean things could go the way they went in your dream, huh?” Pidge was struggling to hide her disappointment. “I… I’ve never had any serious issues with hacking the galra’s systems. I guess I didn’t want to believe it because of my pride. I’m really sorry, Lance.”

“We all are,” Shiro affirmed. “We should have trusted you from the get-go. Team, pull back out of their range. We need to discuss where to go from here.”

Their channel to the castleship crackled to life. “This is incredible!” Coran shouted. “Lance, you’ve been given a very rare blessing! Why, if you didn’t have that dream, we’d have probably all ended up dying horribly in an abridged war! Good thing you weren’t afraid to speak up and look absolutely crazy.”

“Thanks, Coran,” Lance deadpanned.

“Lance, I also regret doubting you. You have my sincerest apologies.” Allura, to her credit, spoke humbly.

With the validation of his team strengthening him, Lance felt his usual bravado return. Blue’s presence flickered in amusement as he commented slyly, “Well, if you really feel so bad about it, feel free to make it up to me on a date sometime.”

“Can we focus?” Keith demanded hotly, cutting off Allura’s exasperated reply. His tone was dangerously irritated. “I’m a little more concerned by the unstable time-bomb that’s currently in the same _quadrant_ as us.”

“Lance, what exactly set off the bomb’s timer last time?” Shiro asked. “If we can avoid doing that, we can clear out the galra and move the bomb to an unoccupied stretch of space to wait for the experts.”

“Some of the galra sentries raised the initial alarm when we began taking out the smaller ships. Once they deemed the situation unsalvageable, a soldier on the bomb’s ship initiated the sequence—I think it was the commander of the battalion. He had to do it in person, too—probably a security measure. I guess he was hoping to take Voltron down with them. _Vrepit sa_ and all that. We caught up with him right after he finished priming it.”

 _And then I shot him off the catwalk and his corpse fell five stories to the floor of the chamber,_ Lance thought. His mouth went dry at the memory.

“Then we’ll need to split up. Half the team needs to occupy the smaller fleets while the other sneaks in to clear the main flagship before they realize how dire the situation is. Pidge, can you handle the communications?”

“Oh, with _pleasure,”_ Pidge said with vindictive relish. “They might have super-encrypted their fancy time bomb, but I’ve been playing with their communications systems for _weeks_. This will be a piece of cake.”

“All right, then. Pidge, get started on that. Once she’s in, Keith, Hunk, you’ll be taking point with me while she and Lance infiltrate the ship. When we’ve destroyed the smaller fleets, we’ll join you guys in the flagship. Taking out the commander of the fleet is a priority—he’s likely the only one with the clearance level to input the codes.”

“Wait, why don’t we just form Voltron and use my split-cannon to take out the small fleets super quickly?” Hunk proposed. “I feel like I never get to use that thing.”

“If we do that, they’ll quickly realize things have gone drastically wrong for them and the commander might be inclined to initiate the sequence even sooner. But if we can keep them occupied—maybe even let them believe they’re winning—until Lance and Pidge have taken over most of the flagship and secured the bomb, we stand a much better chance at victory,” Allura explained.

“I… I don’t know about that whole Pidge-and-I-take-on-a-whole-ship part,” Lance spoke up uncomfortably. “There were a lot of galra soldiers last time, and we barely made it to the chamber in one piece, and that was with most of us on the infiltration squad, not only two.”

 _And I don’t want all that blood on my hands._ He remembered pressing the trigger, the slight kickback of his rifle as it fired a pulse that separated a galra’s head from its shoulders in a pulpy mess. It was different to take a life in person than it was to blast a ship far away from inside a giant space lion. Lance was sure the look of shock on the soldier’s face when he died would linger with him forever.

“Do you remember the patrol routes of the sentries? You can use that knowledge to avoid the worse of them and get to the chamber quickly. Pidge can put the security cameras on a loop and disable intra-communication in the ship for extra cover. You just need to hold the fort long enough to block the commander from getting to the bomb and then we’ll join you. We can take out any lingering soldiers along the way.”

Keith’s confidence helped banish Lance’s doubts. “I guess that makes sense,” he agreed reluctantly.

“Really?” Keith seemed pleasantly surprised. “I thought you would try to argue with me.”

“Well, if you enjoy it so much… ” Lance taunted, grinning at the sound of Keith’s scoffing. “Pidge, we good to go?”

“I just disabled the fleet’s communications,” Pidge confirmed. “Working on the battlecruiser’s security cams now… almost there… _aaaand,_ we’re in. Battlecruiser comms. are down and their security cameras are looping. We’re good to go.”

“Okay, everybody, this is it. If things go wrong, Lance, Pidge, your first priority is getting back to the Lions. Allura, are you ready to open a wormhole if we need to make a getaway?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but yes,” Allura confirmed. “Coran and I will provide as much backup from the castle as possible without demolishing the fleets too early. When Lance and Pidge have secured the bomb, we’ll increase fire to help finish off the fleets.”

“Perfect. Let’s do this.”

Lance had his doubts, but the plan seemed to be working smoothly. It was truly chaotic around them as Shiro and the others engaged the smaller fleets, but Pidge’s cloaking tech kept Blue and Green from being detected as they delicately picked their way through the battle. After disabling the flagship’s surface sensors, he and Pidge attached their Lions to the ship’s underbelly and dismounted. It had barely taken a minute for her to initiate an override on the bay doors, and, with Lance holding onto her securely, she reeled them in with her bayard anchored to the far side of the docking bay before the artificial gravity engaged and the doors closed behind them.

“We’re inside the ship,” Pidge informed the team as Lance formed his bayard. “Moving forward to the bomb chamber now.”

“Be careful,” Allura pleaded.

“Understood,” Pidge replied.

“Yeah, I’m not too keen on getting blown up for a third time, so I wouldn’t worry,” Lance said flatly. Although his nerves were resurging, he took deep breaths and notched the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, already looking down the sights.

He turned to Pidge. “Last time, the majority of the sentries were performing on-site repairs to damage on the ship’s port. Can somebody get an “accidental” shot on that side of the main ship? We can skirt a large portion of them if they’re centralized portside.”

“Give me a sec, I can do it with Red’s jaw blade,” Keith grunted. Sounds of laserfire and Keith’s breathing. “Just gotta get these fighter ships off my tail… _yes!_ Nice shooting, Hunk!”

“I try,” Hunk said, without an ounce of modesty.

“Closing in!” Keith reported smugly. A moment later, a strong vibration rocked through the battlecruiser. Red lights inlaid in the corridor began flashing and a klaxon started up. Lance and Pidge pressed themselves against the wall, barely daring to breathe when a group of sentries came rushing past.

“Okay, move!” They darted forward as one when the last straggler had passed by.

The peace that had settled Lance earlier was fading. He tried to reach out to Blue, but his connection with her must not have been as strong as he’d thought—he could barely feel her, even at this distance.

The deja vu had been easier to ignore when he was making different choices than the ones he’d made in the dream, but the internal layout of the flagship was so familiar that goosebumps rose all over his body. Every step he took closer to the bomb, it felt like there was a growing weight attached to his ankles.

A sentry turned the corner in front of them and had enough time to state, “Unauthorized lifeforms detected—” before the nose of Lance’s bayard swung up and a single tap of the trigger sent it flying back in charred pieces.

“Great shot, Lance!” Pidge cheered. Lance felt himself redden. It was funny—he wanted so badly to matter to the team, but any praise made him too bashful to actually gloat over it.

“The chamber is coming up—another left, then a right,” he told her as they slowed to peek around a corner. He opened the comm. channel to the team. “Hey, we’re almost at the bomb chamber. You guys finishing up out there?”

“No, but we can if you’re ready,” Hunk answered. “Man, Lance! You should have been out here dude, I just smashed through, like, twenty fighter ships with Yellow.”

“I’m sure it was awesome, buddy,” Lance laughed. “Not as awesome as what Blue and I could have done, but still pretty cool.”

“Aw, come on.” Hunk complained.

“Making our way to your location now,” Shiro said shortly.

Two soldiers were standing by the chamber's entrance, fiddling with a panel. Although the ship’s comm. systems were shut down, there was no way the officers hadn’t noticed the problem yet and weren’t working on getting them back online. Lance would have to take out the soldiers quickly before they could manually restart the system and raise the alarm.

Doing so would require two quick shots. There would be no room for error. He closed his eyes, visualizing where the soldiers stood in relation to each other and imagining the smooth path of movement for his bayard—Breathe in, line up the shot, take out the first one, slide the sights slightly over and take out the second. Breathe out.

“Lance?” Pidge whispered.

“Give me a sec, Pigeon. Stay here until I give the signal,” Lance whispered back. He inhaled and held the breath in his lungs. Then he whipped out from behind the corner, bayard firmly planted against his shoulder.

The galra soldiers startled. “Enemy intruder sighte—”

Lance’s shot connected perfectly and the first soldier went down. His pulse was roaring in his ears. The second one raised his rifle. It clattered to the ground a moment later along with the lifeless body holding it.

The breath escaped his chest in a massive _whoosh._ “Stay _here,”_ he repeated firmly to Pidge, and then darted down the corridor to the two bodies. He was resolutely keeping his mind blank. Their radios were silent, so he assumed that communications were still down. Adrenalin worked its way through his system slowly, leaving him feeling weak and cold.

The bodies were heavy and cumbersome, but he dragged them away from the chamber regardless. A motion-sensor went off as he passed and a closet opened. He took the offer and dumped the corpses into the tiny room. Then he exited and went back to the bomb chamber, motioning for Pidge to make her way to him.

There was nothing to be done for the blood spatter, but at least this way, she wouldn’t have to see the corpses. They’d all tried to take the lion’s share—hah, pun—of the killing from her shoulders, but Lance knew she’d still taken lives. They all had. Sometimes it was hard to remember they were the heroes when at the end of the day, Lance had to wash the blood from his gloves so they wouldn’t stain.

Pidge knelt to begin hacking the door's security system, her face pale as she did her best to avoid looking at the obvious blood trails leading down the hallway. Lance moved to cover her back as she worked, blocking view of her with his body. “What’s everybody’s ETA?" he said to the channel. "We’ve got the chamber locked down.”

“5 minutes out,” Shiro responded. “Keith, where are you?”

“Way ahead of you, Shiro,” Keith answered. “Already on the ship. Lance, I’m close to your location.”

“You were supposed to wait for Hunk and I,” Shiro said sternly.

“Why?” Keith asked, as though genuinely puzzled. “You guys were just cleaning up the stragglers, and Lance and Pidge might have needed reinforcements.”

Shiro sighed explosively. “Any sighting of the commander?” he asked Lance, clearly swallowing his losses where the hotheaded red paladin was concerned.

That same thought had been niggling at Lance’s mind the entire time. Since they'd moved through the flagship much faster than in his dream, he thought he and Pidge would have reached the chamber right as the commander did. If he recalled correctly, the commander had looked somewhat similar to the deceased (or space-ejected, anyway) Sendak, albeit with both organic arms still intact.

“No,” he said slowly as Pidge worked. “We haven’t seen him yet. In my dream, he was already in the bomb chamber when Pidge and I got there, but... we got here earlier than in my vision and we’ve been guarding the entrance since. The ship hasn’t started blaring the bomb-warning, so nothing’s set it off.”

“Keep your—what is your expression?—’eyes skinned’?” Allura advised.

“That’s ‘eyes peeled’, Princess, but you were close enough,” Pidge laughed distractedly, tongue clenched between her teeth in concentration. “I’m about through the firewalls… _man_ this door has some serious protection, I can’t even imagine how the bomb itself was any more complex.”

A blur of red flashed around the corner at the end of the corridor. Lance’s gun swept up and he nearly fired, only just managing to abort the twitch of movement when he realized it was Keith running towards them.

“Warn a guy next time, huh?” Lance hissed as Keith came within earshot. “I nearly shot your fuck—uh, freaking face off!”

“Oh no, not the curse words,” Pidge deadpanned. “I’ve never heard _those_ before, my innocent ears would be tainted.”

“I told you I was coming,” Keith said unconcernedly. “You should have been expecting me.”

God, sometimes Lance wanted nothing more than to punch him in the mouth.

“Got it. Door’s ours.” Pidge straightened, banishing the holotech display from her arm computer. “You guys ready?”

“Let’s do this,” Keith growled. He summoned his bayard, circling the sword’s tip in impatient figure-8’s.

“Wait for us—” Shiro started.

The door slid open.

The commander was waiting on the other side, a high-powered pulse-rifle already trained on the doorway.

There was no time to react through the shock. Keith went down under the first blast. Pidge screamed. Lance brought up his rifle, feeling so _stupid—_ then a second blast caught him in the chest and he found himself knocked to the ground, head facing where Keith lay. There was a large hole burned in the side of Keith’s helmet and his wide eyes were lifeless, his face finely-splattered in a mist of blood.

Lance looked down, for some reason surprised at the gaping crater in his own chest. He didn’t feel any pain, only shock. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t hear anything. It felt like he was floating.

Lance died.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I should study for midterms  
> Inner me: Write seventeen pages of a new chapter in google docs  
> Me: y tho  
> Inner me: You gotta  
> \--  
> holla if you saw Keith being somewhat irrationally jealous in this chapter lmao


	3. Butterfly Effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third time around, the infiltration goes much differently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends, I'm back. Yes, you have all finally unveiled my true, shameful tendencies—I switch active interest in fandoms like crazy. So you all can thank [Binart over on Tumblr](http://binart.tumblr.com/) for the inspiration to get this chapter out. I honestly wasn't interested in picking it up again just yet until she motivated me.

Soft, spanish guitar.

Warmth.

Something covering his face.

Lance’s eyes shot open and he jackknifed upright, screaming _“NO!”_ at the top of his lungs. He was wrapped in something that restricted his legs and arms. He was stuck, he was captured, oh God, Keith, Pidge, they were _dead—_

He rolled over and fell into a short, but terrifying drop—

—and hit the floor hard, still trailing his blankets behind him. Gasping wildly, he scrambled forward on his hands and knees, kicking his way free and ripping off the sleepmask. He didn’t stop moving until he hit the far wall of the bedroom. One hand clutched at his chest—whole, undamaged—expecting to feel the grisly edges of a crater.

He was fine.

_He was fine._

He was _fine!?_

 _Keith is dead,_ a voice whispered in his mind, and, sucking in air, he clutched at his hair and pulled it until he felt pain, until he could make sure this was real.

“Just a nightmare,” he whispered, “Just a nightmare.”

Even if he knew it wasn’t.

He watched Keith _die_ , for God’s sake, he saw the blood, the helmet with the hole burned through—and Pidge’s _scream—_

It was suddenly, bizarrely, too much to handle, like a sensory overload. The room was already warm, but his clothes felt like they were clinging too tightly to his skin and he was damp with sweat. He unwound the headphones from where they had tangled around his neck and gripped them tightly with both hands until his knuckles bleached white and he felt like he could draw in a full breath again without it gasping prematurely in his lungs.

He sat like that for a while, watching the numbers on his clock change.

By the time he felt composed enough to get his thoughts in order, it was 6:07. In his dreams—premonitions, fits, _whatever—_ he awoke at precisely 6:01. Subtract the time of his little freak-out session, and he almost definitely had woken up at 6:01 today too.

“What the hell,” he muttered as he forced himself to get dressed, gladly shucking off his sweat-soaked pajamas. “What the hell is happening to me, what the hell, _whatthehell…”_ Even his _clothes_ were arranged in his closet exactly as he remembered them—the jacket was dangling perilously from the blue hanger, his jeans folded up neatly over the white one… how the hell was this possible?

He had to check on Keith and Pidge. Even if they were perfectly fine and he had just lost his space-marbles—he had to make sure they were okay.

That sense of heroic bravado carried him all the way to Keith’s bedroom door, where it abruptly packed up its bags and took the midnight train home. He stood there, fist raised to knock, unable to make it move.

It was so silly, but suddenly he found himself struck by an intense sense of self-consciousness. What if he knocked, and Keith had been sleeping but woke up just to answer the door, thinking it was another one of Allura’s emergency drills, and realized it was just Lance, standing there like an idiot?

What would he even say? _Hi Keith, listen, I know I’ve made it seem like I hate you, and I do kind of resent you for being so much effortlessly better than me at everything, but you’re still my teammate and I think I’ve lost my mind but I’m pretty sure I just saw you die? And I’m relieved that you’re not?_

He might have stood there for another five minutes, steadily talking himself out of it, if not for Keith’s door whipping open and the boy himself stepping through the doorway. He was looking down at his feet as he scrubbed a towel through shower-damp hair and didn’t see Lance standing there, frozen, until they collided.

They both leapt apart as though repulsed by a magnet.

“What the heck, Lance?” Keith shouted, ripping his towel off his head. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms that slung low over his hips. Of _course_ he had an eight-pack; Lance stared enviously, resisting the urge to rub at his own abdominals. His jacket was slightly damp from Keith’s wet skin, and he was strangely aware of it. “What are you doing, it’s six in the morning!”

“Well—what are _you_ doing?” Lance blustered.

“I always get up this early to train,” Keith said, looking annoyed. “But usually, you’re not standing outside my door.” He hesitated, and a darker emotion crossed his face. “Are you playing a prank or something?”

“No!” Lance assured, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I just…” There was simply no other explanation that didn’t sound even crazier. “...Had a bad dream, that’s all. About the team. Wanted to make sure everybody was okay.” His eyes rose from where they had been glued to the floor. When his voice came out next, it was small and uncertain. “I mean, we’re kind of… you know, each other’s family out here.”

Keith eyed him strangely, as though Lance had unexpectedly donned a pink tutu and declared his undying love for him.

“...I guess…” he said hesitantly.

Awkward seconds ticked past.

 _“Welp_ , this is getting weird, I’m gonna leave now.” Lance said, hooking his thumb back over his shoulder. Without waiting for a reply, he spun on his heel and fast-walked down the hall. Nape burning under Keith’s puzzled stare, he rubbed his face, hoping to soothe away the blush. Keith had an ability to make Lance feel like the dumbest person on earth sometimes. He hated it.

After a moment, he realized that his feet were carrying him to the common area. The feelings of confusion and fear hadn’t entirely left him yet, and he was eager to seek out familiar faces for comfort.

Clearly, Keith wasn’t dead—his glistening six-pack stood testament to that fact. And he hadn’t opened up the conversation with anything like, “Oh, Lance! Good to know you’re up, since we almost died on that mission! Aren’t healing pods _great_ , haha?” And there was also the small matter that Lance didn’t have a gaping crater in his chest, which was always appreciated. It was like the events had never happened.

...Which would make this, what, the third time Lance had lived this day?

The doors opened to an empty common room. Lance sighed and plopped himself down on the sofa, one foot dangling off the couch.

“Castle, what day is it?” he asked out loud, swinging his foot idly.

“It is the fourth day of Itar’il, season of the Shining Stars,” the pleasant voice of the AI chimed. It was like the Altean version of Siri, or “Ok Google”, but it also watched everything in the castle 24/7 and supervised internal repairs and functions. They all knew how much Allura hated it, because it reminded her of her lost father’s hologram. As a result, they did their best to only use it when she wasn’t in the room.

“No,” Lance sighed. “I mean, what day is it according to the human calendar?”

“It is the seventeenth of your October,” the AI responded.

Which couldn’t be correct, because it had been October 17th _yesterday._

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” he whispered.

“Will that be all?” The AI enquired politely..

“Yeah, thanks,” Lance answered, swinging himself upright. It was time to seek out Coran and Allura. “Oh, can you tell me where Coran is?”

A gentle ping, and then a holographic map of the castle’s layout sparked into being. A blinking blue dot appeared in the ship’s bridge.

“Got it, thanks.” He set off at a slow pace, hands jammed deeply in his pockets as he tried to organize his thoughts.

Keith didn’t remember it, but it was too lucid to have not happened. It wasn’t at all like remembering the hazy details of a dream from last night—Lance could recall with vivid accuracy feeling sensations of pain, hunger, the measurable passing of time. Seeing and recognizing faces, reading signs and written words. It was just like remembering what you did the day before.

But somehow, the date hadn’t moved.

Maybe Coran could shed some light on the subject. There was a decent chance it was just another one of those Altean things. For example, Lance hadn’t thought wormholes to be an actual... _thing_ outside of Earth’s science-fiction, but here Allura was, popping them into existence left and right like it was no big deal. Time suddenly folding in on itself? Yeah, no big deal. Totally fixable. Mark it down for Wednesday, 2 o’clock, on the Voltron calendar of “Galactic Problems to Deal With”.

Not to mention...if what he was experiencing _was_ truly real, then it might have something to do with the bomb. The chronoton detonator. “Chrono”, meaning time. The thing that they didn’t fully understand the effects of, the thing that could either blow up a whole part of the galaxy or erase people from the fabric of existence among other potential consequences. _That_ thing.

...On second thought, it _definitely_ had something to do with the bomb.

He felt a little relieved as his conviction strengthened. If it was the result of the bomb, then at least they knew it had an identifiable cause. Then Pidge, Allura, and Hunk could just work their collective magic, and next thing you know, Lance would be waking up bright and sunny on the beautiful morning of October 18th.

Although, that solution didn’t deal with the bomb _itself_.

At some point or another, Voltron would have to face it; it was just simply too dangerous to leave in galra hands. You knew a superweapon was bad when it made the _Death Star_ look about as harmless as a child’s toy gun.

 _If all this is even real,_ a voice whispered doubtfully to him. He brushed it off, intentionally going back through his memories of yesterday’s iteration of October 17th. It had to be real. There was just simply no other explanation.

In fact… this time loop thing was kind of a blessing! If he hadn’t gotten caught up in it… he shivered. There wouldn’t have been enough bits and pieces of Lance to pack up in a coffin to ship home to his family. Not even an ashen silhouette like the kind left behind by nuclear bomb victims would have remained. The bomb would have obliterated everything.

He tried to imagine Shiro standing in front of his parents, shoulder slumped and wearing that hangdog expression he sometimes got as he explained that their son was dead. Having to deal with their questions, grief, and anger. Shiro was really good at taking the reins and doing the hard jobs, but delivering the news of the death of a teenager under his command would destroy him.

With a smooth hiss, the doors to the bridge opened. Coran had his back to the door and was fiddling at his workstation, twiddling knobs and muttering lowly under his mustache. Several tools were rolled out on a grease-stained cloth beside him.

Lance stopped and stared, unexpectedly overcome by the feelings of warm domesticity that flowed through him at the sight. God knows he didn’t really consider the Castle as his home—more like a really-cool, tricked out space-hotel with laser canons that he happened to live in—but Coran, from day one, had been nothing but welcoming and friendly. On several occasions, he’d gone out of his way to track down Lance when he isolated himself in the bridge with the star-map and cajoled him into conversation. Lance had told him about the turquoise waters and white sand of Varadero Beach, the comfort of his mother’s _mixtos_ (sandwiches made from lightly buttered Cuban bread and sliced roast pork, thinly sliced Serrano ham, Swiss cheese, dill pickles, and yellow mustard), and weekly showings at the local cinema.

In turn, Coran had shared with him about Altean architecture, the watermelon-pink waters of Altea’s beaches, and some of their culture’s festivals and traditions like _Tresalis,_ which was a day where you celebrated warrior friendships by inscribing the first three letters of their name on the shaft of your weapon of choice. That way, the ones you loved would always be at your side in battle.

Sometimes Coran teared up talking about it, even if he was always smiling. And Lance would feel ashamed for being so dramatic about his homesickness, when at least his home still existed, whereas Allura and Coran were now forever doomed to be the last wandering vagrants of a dying race.

“Ah, Lance! Just the man I needed! Come here, I could use your help with something.”

Lance raised his eyes from where they had drifted to the wall. Coran was turned around, beaming as he waved a vaguely wrench-like tool in his direction.

“I have some questions for you,” Lance said as he approached. The bridge was cold, so he twisted his hands further in the warm pockets.

Coran had turned back to his work. This close, Lance could see that he was tinkering with one of the wiring panels of the command station. “Well, I’d be happy to answer them! Hand me that _sorf,_  will you? It’s the tool with the thin hooked needle sticking out its end.”

Lance passed him the tool. “Do Alteans have any experience with time-travel? Or just, uh, any experiments in, um, chronotechnology, I guess?”

Coran looked up briefly as he deftly threaded the curved, needle-like tool through several wires. “Now that’s a random question, but fortunately for you, I’m quite prepared to answer it! You see, I had a cousin who had an uncle, who married this lovely lady whose sister…or was it a brother, oh quiznak, I can’t remember...”

“Coran,” Lance said gently, unable to stop his lips from quirking into a smile.

“Yes, well, the point is, they worked as a chronotologist—a division of our scientists who studied energies from the rift as they related to time. You see, we’d noticed that being near the rift had strange interferences on tickers and other time-keeping devices. Some scientists would be on-site for days and return, thinking they’d only been gone for a few hours. Conversely, sometimes the crewmembers would report strong feelings of familiarity with some of the day’s events. King Alfor, however, let Honerva and Zarkon’s interest in the rift as a potential energy source for ships and other spacecraft take top priority, so they never had much time to themselves to study it. Eventually, as Alfor grew more concerned about the rift, he ordered several subdivisions of research to close because they were too dangerous. The chronotologists were one of them.” He shrugged. “And that’s about all we know.”

“‘Feelings of familiarity with the day’s events’?” Lance repeated, grinning. The relief was so strong, it made his knees weak. “So, like, deja vu?”

Coran tilted his head. “I am unfamiliar with this term, but I’m sure it’s correct.”

“So—how do I even say this—do you think it’s possible for someone to get stuck in a time loop?”

Coran frowned, tapping his finger against his lips. “Ah—I presume so? Although we’ve developed the science behind wormhole technology, we haven’t fully explored the branching avenues of science connected to it—so, for example, all the ways that the compression of space and time could go horribly, _horribly_ wrong.”

Slamming his hands on the dash, Lance leaned forward and stared intensely into Coran’s surprised eyes. “Coran, you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I think—no, I’m pretty much sure at this point—that this is happening to me.”

“Ah...okay?” Coran said slowly. He made a swirly gesture with his hand. “And you think this...because…?”

“Because I’ve _lived_ this day _twice_ already!” Lance shouted. “And I—” his voice failed him for a moment, winking out like a faulty flashlight “—I’ve died twice, but I woke up each time and now I—I’m so confused about what’s going on...”

He fumbled to a stop as Coran tugged his glove off and pressed his bare palm to Lance’s forehead. Alteans ran several degrees cooler than humans, and the touch of another’s skin against his own felt nice. Like his mom, checking up on him when he was little.

“No fever,” Coran hummed concernedly. “Have you ingested any strange or unfamiliar substances lately?”

Well, good feelings gone; Lance’s eyes flared open and he brushed Coran’s hand off his head testily. “We’re in _space_ , Coran,” he said exasperatedly, “ _every_ food substance out here is strange and unfamiliar to me!”

“Right,” Coran sighed, smacking his forehead lightly. “Should have thought of that.”

“Thought of what?” came a feminine voice from the opposite side of the room.

They both turned to see Allura and Shiro entering the bridge. Allura was carrying a datapad at her side and Shiro was sipping something from a mug. She wore her standard dress and he was sleekly outfitted in his usual activewear.

“Princess,” Coran said, dipping his head formally. “Shiro.”

Allura smiled warmly. “Good morning, Coran.” She nodded to Lance. “I’m surprised you’re up; usually, I consider sending a maintenance-bot to shock you out of bed as a last resort.”

Her tone was relaxed and friendly, but Lance was too worked up to capitalize on it. “Coran and I are discussing something kind of private,” he said tersely. “Could you guys give us a moment?”

Shiro frowned over his mug. There were deep bags under his eyes. Another night of nightmares, then. It was an unspoken, unaddressed bit of common knowledge that sometimes Shiro had night terrors about his time in captivity. “Lance, that was rude. She was just saying hello.”

“I understand that,” Lance said strainedly. “And normally, I would _love_ to exchange hellos with her, but this is important. Really, really, important. Right, Coran?” He looked right, expecting to see Coran nodding along with him, and was irritated when he caught the tail-end of a nonverbal communication between him and Allura.

“Uh, yes! Lance was just telling me his suspicions that he’s caught in a time-loop,” Coran explained hurriedly. Lance rolled his eyes and slapped a palm over his face. Coran was loveable and fun, but he had no concept of privacy.

“Really?” Allura smiled and tilted her head, clearly under the impression that Lance was in the midst of telling a joke. “Please go on, I’d love to hear some of them.”

Lance stared at her and Shiro, standing there so relaxed and carefree, expectantly waiting with amusement to be told another one of Lance’s dramatic exaggerations. Then he thought about what it had felt like to die. The pain of it, the total, consuming grip of dread and the paralyzing certainty in your impending mortality. All the wrenching regrets, the bitterness of failure. Feeling at the moment of death like something had pierced you through the middle of your soul and yanked upwards in a rush, pulling you out of your body like crabmeat from a shell.

They had no idea, no idea at all.

A feeling of lightheadedness coursed through his body and he felt himself sway.

“Whoa there!” Coran said, shocked, and an arm braced him as he sagged.

“Lance!” Shiro barked. Heavy footsteps ran across the bridge and a metallic hand was suddenly supporting his other side. “Are you all right? Allura, what’s wrong with him?”

“I’m okay,” Lance whispered, but nobody seemed to hear him.

Allura had joined them now, and Lance felt her hands touch his chest. Usually, the contact would have made him swoon, but he felt too sick to properly rejoice. Her fingertips glowed and warm vibrations sank into his chest.

“I don’t sense anything wrong,” Allura said uncertainly.

“There’s a superweapon, we’re going to die—I died, Keith died, I don’t know what happened to Pidge—” Lance rambled, knowing that with every word he uttered he lost any credibility in their eyes, but unable to stop the flood from his mouth. “We—I tried to stop it, we did it differently, but somehow the commander knew we would be there…”

“I don’t quite know what’s going on, but I think you need some time in the healing pod. It does wonders for stress and exhaustion,” Coran said slowly, and he and Shiro began maneuvering Lance towards the exit that led to the healing chamber.

Lance snapped out of whatever funk had gripped him at that. “No, stop! I’m serious, I’m not crazy!” He ripped himself out of their grasp, furious that they wouldn’t believe him, furious with himself for messing the situation up that badly that quickly. “You guys never believe me, why don’t you ever believe me?”

He took a few steps backward and pointed out the windows at the coldly glittering expanse of space. “I’m telling you, there’s a bomb out there! It’s a weapon like none we’ve ever seen before! It… it was called a chronoton detonator, and I swear I’ve lived this day three times now, and it keeps resetting when I die…” Sweat ran down the back of his neck and his palms felt moist.

“Lance, take a deep breath, you need to calm down,” Allura ordered.

It was the wrong thing to say. Lance exploded. “DON’T FUCKING TELL ME TO _CALM DOWN!_ I _DIED._ I DIED, AND I NEED YOU TO _LISTEN_ TO ME!” He smacked his fist in his palm to emphasize his words. Allura’s eyes widened in shock and she took a step back at the volume of his voice.

 _“LANCE!”_ Shiro roared, and everyone flinched. Shiro rarely yelled, and when he did, it was at a bad situation, never _ever_ at them. The shock of it stunned the room to complete silence, and whatever panicked mania remained in Lance guttered out like a snuffed candle.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said shakily after a moment. “But you don’t understand, I’m not sick, this really is happening to me. I need help.”

Allura seemed to have recovered somewhat. “I accept your apology,” she said stiffly, though her shoulders were rigid. “I agree with Coran, though. Clearly you’re too distressed right now to discuss this in a rational manner. It would be best if you took a short cycle in the healing pod to dispel any possible contributors to your… state of mind.”

Lance remembered Keith’s suggestion from the previous time-loop. “If I go under for a few hours, and I wake up still sticking to my story, will you please hear me out? I can—I can tell you an account of what’s going to happen this evening, and then you can see if it starts to come true.”

“Now, that’s more like the sharpshooting strategist I know,” Coran said, his voice a weird mixture between pride and worry. Any happiness Lance might have felt at that curdled in his stomach upon remembering that it was originally Keith’s idea, not his own. He didn’t deserve praise for it. How long would he have to ride on the coattails of others?

“I agree,” Shiro rumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. He seemed slightly more relaxed, but his eyes kept flicking critically over Lance’s face. Shiro had mad dad-senses; he must have seen the trembly fear in Lance’s body stance and as a result, he softened imperceptibly, holding out his human hand. When he spoke, his voice was the gentle tone it usually carried. “Come on buddy, I’ll walk with you to the pods.”

It was slightly humiliating, tramping out of the room with Shiro as Allura and Coran watched on silently. He knew they thought he was crazy. Maybe if he hadn’t absolutely _lost_ it, they would have believed him, but his composure had crumbled and he’d killed his own argument with his regrettable delivery.

If—or when, he thought to himself darkly—the loop began anew, at least he’d know how _not_ to seek help.

Shiro turned his face to give Lance some privacy as he wordlessly changed into the healing pod suit. After that whole “evil castle” fiasco, Lance had secretly begun to hate the pods. For God’s sake, wasn’t anybody slightly leery of them? They’d trapped Allura and Coran in stasis for 10,000  _years!_

“I’m not crazy,” Lance muttered one last time as he laid himself against the tilted padding in the tube. The curved walls immediately snapped shut over him like a clam-shell and his heartbeat stuttered. It was a familiar sight from the inside; Lance had probably been in the healing pods more than any other team member, even Pidge, and she was all of four-and-a-half feet tall with even less combat experience than he had. Another mark of embarrassment for him. He might as well just laminate his name and slap it on this particular pod for his personal use.

“No one thinks that you are,” Shiro reassured, resting a comforting hand on the glass. “I’m sure something’s going on with you, and at the very least, the pod might help remove some of it.”

Lance snorted. “I wish.”

Shiro patted the glass once. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Gas hissed into the chamber. Lance flinched, tasting it on his tongue—and then everything went fuzzy, soft, and dark.

* * *

 

He was awake without ever remembering falling asleep.

A hissing noise. His body was limp and he fell forward helplessly. There were alarms blaring, so loud that his ears seemed to vibrate with it. “Gah…”

Someone grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Lance, wake up! The team is in danger!”

That did the trick. He prised his eyelids apart, with effort. Coran’s fire-red mustache swam into view overhead. “C’ran…? Wuzzgoi’on…”

“We received a distress call from the Nexa quadrant this evening about a galra superweapon.” Coran paused, then said, “Lance, you were right about the bomb. As unbelievable as it sounds, the galra have somehow managed to create a chronoton detonator.” He seemed to marvel at his own words as he said them.

“Time izzit?” Lance groaned, pushing himself upright. Why were the alarms going off? He hated the healing pod, it made his brain feel like it was operating in distinct parts at separate speeds.

“Uh, about that...I know we said only a few of your Earth hours, but Allura thought you might need more rest than that...so, um, we left you in all day.” His expression lost its sheepish tilt and turned grim again. “But then we got the distress call. Shiro didn’t want to aggravate you unnecessarily before we knew all the details, so he and the others went on a quick scouting mission while I went down to wake you up—did you know Pidge was working on expanding the cloaking technology to the other lions?—but a passing fighter ship slammed into the Green Lion by accident and their shield fell. They were detected and they’re trying to fend off the fleet now. It's not looking good.”

“Coran!” Lance said explosively, too angry to articulate as his brain caught up. “I can’t believe Allura—help me up. I need to get to Blue.”

Coran steadied him until he could stand without wavering. His eyes were unusually serious. “I’m sorry we doubted you, Lance. Get to Blue, I’ll report back to Allura on the bridge.”

Lance rubbed his face, trying to dispel the last tendrils of sleep. “Tell her to be ready to create a wormhole at any moment, and keep the comms. open. There’s a really good chance we’re not going to be able to stop the bomb if it gets primed.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Coran said gravely.

There was no time for more sentiment. They both sprinted away in separate directions.

* * *

 

Blue was a swirling mass of curiosity and something like distant concern in his head. Lance gritted his teeth and pushed harder on the throttle. He felt her displeasure at his silence, and Lance could have sworn the alien machine refused to kick up the speed for a moment before acquiescing.

How much control did they actually have over their Lions? Sometimes, when Lance didn’t have her mental presence suffusing his brain, it was a scary thought. He thought about Red refusing to come to Keith’s aid until it was critical and felt a flicker of anger. It was from the nerve-wracking situation, he knew, and he was just seeking a target—it was what he did with Keith. What he did with everybody when he was scared or upset. It was just easier to lash out or isolate yourself than it was to address the reason of concern.

“Why can’t you guys just help us when we need it? Why does everything have to a huge test of character?” he muttered angrily. The bright spark in his head travelled down his spine and dropped significant degrees. Lance shivered when a phantom arctic breeze seemed to shuffle through his skin.

Fleeting impressions passed through their bond. Lance, absolutely tiny, with his face upturned and shining in wonder as he gazed at Blue. Lance, his hand on Hunk’s shoulder as they laughed about something. Lance sitting alone in a darkened room, listless and sad, half-hoping someone would come find him and half-hoping they wouldn’t and being disappointed either way. Lance, yelling at Coran when he emerged from the accidental healing-pod stasis session during the castle’s corruption.

Happy and sad. Strong and weak.

It didn’t feel like she was judging him; just exposing every bit of his personality, the good and the bad. It wasn’t painful, but it was difficult to accept so bluntly put.

“We have to keep growing if we’re going to be the defenders of the universe,” Lance grumbled knowingly. “Okay, fine. You win.” He inhaled and said, in a shaky attempt at a cavalier tone, “Freaking Space-Yodas.”

The ocean relaxed and drew back, giving him some room to think.

The comm lit up and Allura’s clear tones came through: “Lance, they’re struggling without Voltron. You need to join up with them and take out the smaller ships.”

He flipped the responder button, gritting his teeth. “No can do, Princess. If we do that, they panic and set off the bomb Kamikaze-style. I have to get on board that ship and disable the bomb manually. Is there any way Pidge or Hunk can be spared from the fight?”

Bright blue laser beams, mixed with the fuchsia energy bolts from the galra fighter ships, lit up the area of space just ahead like forks of lightning. Already, he could see tiny shapes, like a cloud of gnats, flitting around four specks.

“Lance, they’re barely holding on as it is, even with the castle’s support. They took us by surprise and the team can’t cover each other’s backs if they’re missing a member! Get in formation, now!”

The frustration was unreal. He wished he could bundle up all his knowledge of the situation and just shove it into her brain so that she’d understand.

“Sorry, Allura,” he said, and muted the mic before she could protest.

He didn’t have the advantage of any cloaking technology this time, but the fight was so intense and hectic, he barely dealt with any of the fighter ships on the wide path he took to the flagship, unnoticed as the galra forces focused on the already known combatants. Blue slammed into the underbelly of the ship and anchored herself with her claws. Lance sent a thought her way and she ripped into the hull with her jaws, then sealed her mouth over the torn entrance, creating a pressurized connecting hallway into the ship. It was definitely less elegant and sneaky than how he and Pidge had secretly boarded, but, well, desperate times called for desperate measures. He was almost ninety-percent sure they’d already lost, anyway. Too many things had gone wrong in an already precarious situation.

It was his third time around this stupid ship. Lance realized he remembered the layout even better than last time and scowled, materializing his bayard with extreme prejudice. Alarms were already going off that the ship’s hull had been breached. Reinforcements would be on their way.

He felt Blue detach from the ship and grinned when she soared away to distract the flagship’s surface turrets. Without a Paladin actively guiding her, she could only do simple actions, but even those would certainly be better than sitting there with your jaws sealed to a nasty galra ship like a sitting duck.

Emergency airlock doors slammed down behind him as he passed through, sealing off the breached area from the rest of the ship.

Lance held his bayard to his shoulder, flicked the settings from stun to lethal, and ran for it.

* * *

 

Apparently, the galra thought their infiltrator would opt for the sneaky-sneak method instead of just gunning for it through the hallways. His blasts mowed them down without mercy or hesitation. It was easier to kill this time around, mostly because none of this even felt very real. Oh, the adrenaline was there, and the fear and anger also, but it almost seemed like the stakes of a mission in a video game. He didn’t know if the consequences would stick. When would this time loop run out? Did he have to die? Did it depend on a fixed moment in time? Combination of both, or some other factor?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to care.

The priority right now was stopping the bomb, no matter what the cost. Maybe that was what he needed to do to break the time loop.

Eventually, he came up to the final T-shaped intersection. A left-turn here would bring him to directly face the blast doors of the bomb chamber. It seemed he reached this point much quicker than he had either of the previous two times, but then again, he’d also joined the party late. So maybe it evened itself out.

His finger flexed restlessly over the trigger as he remembered opening the blast doors to the sight of the commander’s gun trained on them. Perversely, he was happy to be alone. If the time loop suddenly fixed itself and the consequences actually did stick, he was relieved that Keith and Pidge weren’t in danger of dying.

If he listened closely, he could just barely hear the slight shuffling of the soldiers guarding the bomb chamber. No peeking was required to gauge their positions; he already remembered it perfectly. One step brought him into view, and two taps of the trigger ended their lives before they could even address him.

“Not a time loop, just infinite target practice,” he muttered to himself as he jogged over and nudged the limp bodies out of the way with his foot. The joke was flat and didn’t even make himself smile, but at least it distracted him from his nerves.

As he knelt to get a closer look at the access panel, it occurred to him that if the time loop had already broken, and he died now, it would be for real, and he would die without ever saying his goodbyes to the team. The realization actually made him hesitate. Would it be better to open communications with the team and work out a plan? Did they have time to do that?

As if in direct answer, the ship abruptly shuddered, intensely-enough that Lance stumbled to his knees and the auxiliary power lights flickered on, bathing everything in a wash of red. Someone must have scored a direct hit on the flagship. Or maybe a pilot had crashed into it by accident. He had no way of knowing.

But if something set the bomb off before it was disabled, there’d be hell to pay no matter what. He knew that much.

So what to do about the blast doors? He had no Pidge to work her magic, and he knew from experience raiding other galra ships in the past that these doors were reinforced enough that even Keith’s blade couldn’t cut through. If only he had a lightsabre. Were those real? Somehow, they seemed like they’d fit the Altean warrior image pretty well. If this all worked out, he’d have to ask Allura about it.

Shucking the guard’s gauntlets off and pressing his limp, furry palm to the reader proved useless as a big, red “ACCESS DENIED” flashed up to greet him. So then, the guards didn’t have clearance to the chamber. Who else on this godforsaken ship would have that level?

Distant clanging reached his ears. Footsteps, more than one pair, and heading this way, too. He pressed himself back against the corridor wall, priming his bayard.

“COMMANDER SENTHREK, YOU WILL CEASE THIS FOOLISHNESS _AT ONCE!_ YOU ARE ALLOWING THIS FLEET TO BE DESTROYED BY THE LIONS OF VOLTRON WHILE YOU HIDE LIKE A COWARD!” A voice boomed from around the corner. Lance caught his breath and looked through the sight, preparing himself.

The figure that rounded the corner was surprisingly unimposing for a galra—short, and paunchy too. He seemed to be more of the space-kitten type, as opposed to the lizard-like variation, going by the fuzzy, lynx-like ears topping his head. Two robotic sentries flanked him. Lance took them down with three shots—one for the left sentry, and two for the one on the right when it just barely dodged the first shot aimed at it.

“What in the name of Zarkon!” The galra shouted, leaping back—but Lance had already risen and closed the distance between them considerably.

“If you move, I will shoot. Do you understand?” he asked. He hope the galra couldn’t see the sweat glistening on his face inside his helmet. Being on the frontlines like this wasn’t really his thing—that was usually up to Keith and Shiro, who were the up-close-and-personal brawlers of the team. Although Hunk could provide devastating takedowns when he got in range, he and Lance usually hung back, laying down cover fire, while Pidge was often sneaking around, either cloaked, hacking, or tricking their enemies with her hologram.

The galra scowled and puffed his chest, obnoxiously displaying a glistening wall of medals pinned to his breast. “Pitiful child, do you even know who I am?”

“Not really. Should I?” Lance goaded.

The galra snarled. “I am Admiral Roth, one of Zarkon’s most trusted advisors!”

There was just no way he could be this stupid.

“Oh, really? You don’t look like an admiral,” Lance said lightly, gesturing with the tip of his gun at the padded belly.

Since fur covered their faces, it was impossible to tell if they blushed at all—but judging by the way Roth’s fur seemed to fluff up in outrage, he guessed his remark was having a similar effect.

“I am inspecting this flagship and its command structure at the behest of Emperor Zarkon himself, foolish whelp,” he hissed, “and I have crushed foes like you long before you were ever even a _kit."_

“Wow, seriously? What did you do, _sit_ on them?” Lance taunted, grinning as the insolence seemed to render the admiral speechless.

“You—I will have you tortured until you scream for death!” the galra spluttered, nearly apoplectic with rage. “The agony underwent by the Champion gladiator will pale in comparison to what I will have inflicted upon you!”

Shiro, he had to be referencing Shiro with that. Everywhere the Black Paladin went in galra-occupied space, they seemed to refer to him as such. Shiro loathed the title vehemently.

The fact that this admiral referenced his captivity so casually must have meant that he’d played some part in overseeing segments of it.

Lance thought about the way he sometimes went down to the kitchens for some midnight food goo, only to find Shiro sitting on the couch, staring blankly and bleakly at nothing, his posture rigid and hands clenched neatly on his thighs. Nobody had ever brought up his obvious PTSD. It seemed like too taboo and delicate a subject to breach, and none of them were really equipped to address it tactfully. Most of the time, Shiro seemed to handle it okay, except for the few times when he really didn’t.

But still, Shiro did his best to take care of them, despite his own issues and exhaustion. The fact that this galra would gloat over the torment of such a noble, selfless individual crossed a line.

Lance pulled the trigger before he could talk himself out of it, only just managing to flick it to stun before the bolt fired. He needed him alive—perhaps the door scanner needed a live signature.

The galra crumpled like wet paper, and Lance stared down at him, breathing heavily as he tried to reign in his temper.

He dematerialized his bayard so he could use both hands to drag the heavy figure the short way down the hall to the blast doors. Good thing he had strong shoulders and arms, otherwise this would be impossible. The limp bulk was surprisingly unwieldy.

When he pressed the furry palm to the scanner, it flashed green. Apparently this disappointing example of a galra was, somehow, an admiral after all. Hopefully, the rest of their command would be as stupid.

The doors opened, and he immediately shoulder-rolled forward, underneath where the commander’s gun had been aimed last time. He came up on one knee, bayard already summoned and ready.

The massive chamber seemed empty; this time, no threatening figure was there to greet him with a high-powered blaster. He scanned the interior in two quick sweeps, following his eyes with the tip of his bayard so that he could shoot at a moment’s notice.

When he saw no one, he relaxed slightly. Perhaps he’d gotten here before the ship’s commander. He wished there was a way to know what small changes were leading to such big differences each loop. By the time they got this whole thing ironed out, he’d be able to write a dissertation on the butterfly effect.

He began the walk down the long, narrow catwalk—then froze, when the mounted screens previously providing readouts on the bomb fizzled and went black.

Then they switched to what looked to be security cam footage—from this very galra ship, nonetheless. The time stamp in the corner was in galra numbers, but Lance had learned enough of them to equate the time to about five minutes ago.

Silent and confused, he watched from a bird’s eye view as the little Lance on screen took out the sentries and began fiddling with the panel to the blast doors.

“I have to say,” came a smooth, masculine voice from behind him. “That was magnificent aim. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Lance spun on his heel, bringing up the bayard—a hand clamped down on the top of the gun and ripped it effortlessly from his grasp. The strength was undeniable. Damn, he knew that galra were physically stronger than humans, but it was rare that he really felt it. Damn, _damn!_

He quickly staggered back so that he was out of range of any follow-through attack. But the galra made no attempt to follow him.

It was, Lance realized upon closer inspection, the commander after all. He looked just as Lance remembered him—huge, muscular, and tall, furry, with large, almost bat-like ears that swiveled back and forth slowly. A thin, winding scar parted the fur alongside one cheek.

The commander smiled, displaying his fanged teeth. It was an empty and cold expression. Without taking his eyes off Lance, he casually stretched one arm out and dropped the bayard over the side of the catwalk.

“Hey!" Lance yelled. Their bayards had an automatic-return function if they got too far separated, but the floor of the bomb chamber, though a dizzying distance under the catwalk, was not far enough to trigger it. He was weaponless.

For the first time, he found himself wishing he had a secondary weapon, like Keith’s dagger.

“Little Paladin,” the galra said pleasantly, “I must thank you for shaming that pitiful airhead of an admiral. Emperor Zarkon and I were planning to humiliate him publicly, but I do find myself enjoying this approach as well. When I spread the word that he was defeated by a human adolescent, I’m sure he will take his own life soon enough.” He paused, then added, with some humor, “I do so enjoy it when problems resolve themselves, don’t you?”

“Any chance you’d want to ‘resolve’ yourself for me?” Lance asked tightly. “Preferably, right off the side of this catwalk?”

The commander laughed. He had an uncomfortably human voice, albeit deep and throaty. Many of the galra they came across seemed to have the stereotypical posh British accent, with some unique twists on a couple vowels that made it just alien-enough to seem different. But if Lance closed his eyes, he was sure that they would just sound human. Perhaps it was the translator chip’s doing.

“How bloodthirsty of you. You remind me of the Champion in the ring. He did not hesitate either, when it came to his enemies. Always an enjoyable spectacle, certainly worth the price of box tickets. Yours is undoubtedly an intriguing species. I'm rather disappointed we only recently discovered it."

The commander’s hands had been clasped behind his back all this time, but as he spoke, one came forward, holding a blaster pistol. Lance recoiled, looking frantically for an escape route or anything to shelter beyond—but there was only the long, exposed length of the catwalk.

“I do so look forward to studying it further,” the commander finished, and pulled the trigger.

 _What?_ Lance had time to think, bewildered, before the fuchsia bolt caught him right in the chest and he fell backwards, blackness rushing up to meet him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll leave some banging reviews. Thank so much. It's worth the neck pain I get from hours of typing this out and planning this story.
> 
> PLEASE HEED THE UPDATED TAGS. THINGS GET DARK. For those scenes, I will provide warning in the chapters and do not plan on going into super graphic detail—around a hard M at most. If at any point the subject material gets too much for you, it is your own responsibility to know your limits and pass on reading that section.
> 
> Now that I've scared you all, hope you enjoyed! Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year!

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, because I don't have the patience for that kind of thing. 
> 
> Leave me a comment! I am a procrastinating, stressed automaton who is fueled by feedback.
> 
> Follow my new Voltron blog @ https://www.tumblr.com/blog/caffeinatedandfrustrated. Sometimes I post Voltron artwork, sometimes I post meta. It's a wild ride.


End file.
